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Other voices: Is a bad road plan good enough?

Still not clear who the losers will be in the Legislature’s road funding compromise.

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OPINION

Other voices: Is a bad road plan good enough?

Published 9:52 a.m. ET Nov. 6, 2015

Road funding talks are at an impasse and may be suspended indefinitely, Gov. Rick Snyder said Tuesday after meeting behind closed doors for more than an hour with the four legislative leaders from both parties.(Photo: File photo)

The road bill passed by the Legislature this week is the least possible deal they could have crafted, but at least, after four years of struggle, they finally found a majority.

Make no mistake, it is worth celebrating that this package should eventually raise up to $1.2 billion to fix Michigan’s worst-in-the-nation roads and bridges. There has to be a sense of relief that the stand-off was at last broken, and that hundreds of millions of dollars in new money will be available for future road work.

And yet, the bill needlessly places the general fund at risk by eventually committing $600 million that may be needed for other urgent priorities. The better solution has always been funding roads in the traditional manner — through fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees that, by law, have to be used for transportation projects.

Instead, this bill calls for just a 7.3 cent increase in the gasoline tax and 11.3 cent hike in the diesel tax, which together will raise $400 million in new revenue, and a 20 percent jump in vehicle registration fees that will add another $200 million.

The other major flaw in this bill is that the money rolls in too slowly. Michigan’s roads are in urgent need of fixing today.

The deal that whizzed through the GOP-led Michigan Senate at breakneck pace yesterday afternoon and passed the House late last night, relies on the same dangerous, poorly defined $600 million in cuts to the state’s general fund that we’ve lambasted time and again. It’s too much — or so Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof of West Olive and Gov. Rick Snyder, both Republicans, have said.

That was last month.

Now, Meekhof’s caucus — with the addition of apostate Sen. Virgil Smith, a Detroit Democrat who is awaiting trial on felony charges — has passed a roads deal that won’t just cut that unspecified $600 million from the state’s general fund, the account that pays for most state services. An expansion in the Homestead Tax Credit included as a sweetener in the package means the total cost to the general fund is just more than $800 million, about 7%, according to the House Fiscal Agency. Another $400 million will come from increased fuel taxes and $200 million from a 20% hike in registration fees.

...The governor should veto this bill. It doesn’t merit his approval.

But Snyder is sold on the package. He called it fiscally responsible late Tuesday night. The general fund cuts, he said, “will not be done at the expense of other people.”